The reason people hated Steam at the time of CS 1.6 is because those people who owned CS on WON would need to repurchase CS on Steam. Since all new players were

The reason people hated Steam at the time of CS 1.6 is because those people who owned CS on WON would need to repurchase CS on Steam. Since all new players were on Steam it meant that the existing playerbase were excluded (there was no WON/Steam cross-play).